“We have people down there,” Kellen said, hoping they could retranslate what Veirn was sending. “We have been unable to make contact with them…”
But then the entity contracted to a small light and jumped away.
They were gone.
And there was no sign or sound of the shuttle and their people.
15
Rinna had many questions she wanted to give voice to, even though she was aware that none of those in the cockpit would have answers to those questions. She just wanted to ask them, to get them out, to stop them clogging her throat.
She was certain with the questions out of the way, the tightness in her chest would ease.
Well, not certain, just hopeful.
She and Tim had encountered some strange things in their travels together, but this might qualify as the strangest. She considered that, because it was a question she could answer herself.
The dragonfly alien they’d clashed with while on the mission with General Halliwell had definitely held the top spot and would retain that spot for its sheer lethality, for now.
She really hoped these wouldn’t move up to that top spot. They hadn’t seemed that hostile, just curious, so she had some hope.
But if the situation changed, at the moment it didn’t seem like they had a lot of options to respond. She checked. Communications were offline. And as far as she could tell, without actually trying, so were weapons.
Not that she thought firing at this would be a good option just yet. But it would have been nice to have the option.
“What are they?” Drun persisted, though his tone had moderated to almost reasonable. Perhaps he’d finally realized that hostility wasn’t his best choice at the moment. That they were all in this—whatever this was—together. It did seem pointless to keep asking, when they’d all made it clear they didn’t know, but humans—she included herself in that designation—were often unreasonable.
Riina felt a subtle shift under foot. She looked to Tim, trying not to let her alarm show. It felt a bit seismic, though much smaller.
“Something’s coming,” Tim said.
Did he realize he’d put his hand over hers? She wasn’t sure, but she was grateful for the warm, very human touch of his hand over hers.
These eyes were much bigger than the last two. Much bigger. As it came closer, their view was reduced to just one, large eye.
Like the previous encounters, there was blinking and looking. And finally a question.
“Who are you?”
Riina paused, trying to order her thoughts. If there were gaps in their translation program, she needed to be very careful what she said. She would have been anyway, but this felt like more.
“We call ourselves humans,” she said. She hesitated, but then didn’t add more. Until they knew more, it didn’t seem wise to identify where they came from. The legends about the lost Garradians had permeated farther than she’d expected.
“Humans.” The pronunciation was a bit off. “How did you get into our…”
Again the translation failed.
“We are not sure,” Riina said. She assumed, from the context, that they flown into the path of some kind of a collector. “As I said, we were on a mission to rescue several of our kind.”
There were more of the blinks. It was unnerving to have the eye staring so intently into the ship. It was close enough she could see the variations in color and the pupil was sharply defined this close.
“Are there more of your kind?” It finally asked.
“There are many more on the planet,” Drun said. “We live there.”
“The planet.” The voice sounded thoughtful. “Oh, you are the…”
Again a translation failure.
